Spain’s Relationship with Russia: Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Spain’s relationship with Russia is marked by distance. Madrid as a national capital is second furthest away from Moscow within Europe. This remote geographical reality in combination with the foreign policy of both countries over the last two centuries has given rise to important consequences. Spain is, for example, the only European country that has never been either an ally or an enemy of Russia ever since the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815. There is not even a legacy connected to the Iron Curtain years. Unlike the rest of Western Europe, which had maintained diplomatic relations with the USSR since the 1940s, Spain did not formally re-establish contact until 1977, during the country’s transition from Franco’s dictatorship to democracy. Paradoxically, the dictator’s hard anti-communist stance and Soviet Union’s policy at that time of welcoming thousands of Republicans (mostly children) in exile meant that no particular feelings of hostility existed among democratic forces. Furthermore, the range of nuclear-armed SS Missiles was barely enough to reach Spain, which consequently helped to reduce bilateral tensions in the Cold War’s final phase.